Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 35

Short Synopsis: Porfy gets caught in a rainstorm.
Highlights: Talk about different from a usual Porfy-episode.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Whoa, instead of the usual travelling stories, this episode goes to tackle existentialism and throws a critical eye at religion. This probably was the most thought-provoking episode of this series yet, especially since it built further upon Damon’s words, back in Greece. Unfortunately, it also meant lots of talking, so I didn’t quite get most of the dialogue. Anyway, here’s what I did pick up:

It’s evening and pouring outside, while Porfy walks down a path, soaked. In the meantime, Carlos, Mina and Isabella are dry in a local pub, while Carlos is losing big, up to the point where he attempts to gamble Mina away. Isabella obviously doesn’t appreciate that attempt, so she smacks him. I mentioned before that Carlos was a walking time-bomb, but Isabella is also beginning to look like one.

Porfy meanwhile arrives at a small cottage. A local pastor (riding a motorbike with side-car) seems to be using the cottage as well, as a shelter for the rain. While Porfy leaves his clothes to dry, he tells the pastor what happened. He stopped by an inn, but they didn’t let him in (probably because the rooms were full, but that’s just my guess). The pastor introduces himself as Juliani, and Porfy tells the usual story about how he’s trying to find his sister.

The next morning, Apollo wakes up to find Porfy with a nasty cold, so he wakes up Juliani, who brings him to the local monastery to rest. Porfy has a few nightmares about Mina, A while later, Porfy wakes up in one of the beds at the monastery, and Juliani greets him. The fever subsided, and Juliani offers him a bit of hot wine, a local recipe against such a fever. The head monk of the monastery then arrives, and greets him as well.

That night, the head monk and Juliani have a small discussion. It was quite hard to understand, but it seems to come down to that Juliani was once a Greek as well, but he stayed at the monastery because of the word of Christ. The next day, Porfy joins Juliano as he preaches in front of a crowd. He talks about what faith is, and saving the poor, but again, it’s hard to fully understand what he’s talking about.

That afternoon, Porfy runs into the head monk, wondering whether he could help cleaning or something. The head monk then laughs, and wonders whether Porfy wants to confess things in front of the church. Porfy then starts to wonder again why god put him and Mina through such hardships. The rage this time is worse than when Porfy lashed out at Damon because of this, probably because he was still very confused.

In any case, Juliani answers with quite a peculiar answer: he claims that Porfy, travelling around because he believes he’ll meet Mina is the same as himself, becoming a Christan because he believes in Christ.

It’s interesting, how most anime lash out against religions, but Porfy no Nagai Tabi instead asks the question of why people still continue to believe in god, even though he puts them through hardships. Especially in Porfy’s case, he has a lot of reasons to doubt god. I myself am very far from a Christian, but it’s interesting to hear the other side of the story. Juliani had a good point: it doesn’t matter who you believe in.

And by the way, I noticed how there was hardly any background music in this episode. The effect was very interesting: most of the series, apart from the earthquake-arc and some others had mostly bright and colourful music. Now that that’s gone, the entire atmosphere of this series suddenly changed to a more down-to-earth version. Also, it’s subtle, but you can see that Porfy is beginning to grow up.